DOJ won't ask Risen to testify at espionage trial

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen will not be asked to testify at the upcoming trial of a suspected source, former CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling, ending for now the writer’s seven-year-long ordeal with the Department of Justice.

On Monday, US
prosecutors said they won’t call Risen to the stand when the
government’s federal espionage trial against Sterling begins this
week. Jury selection is scheduled to start Tuesday.

The Justice Department has long sought testimony from Risen in
hopes of having the writer confirm that Sterling, a former
intelligence agency operations officer, unlawfully disclosed
classified intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program
described in Risen’s 2006 book, State of War. But the writer has
refused to answer as to the identity of his source, deferring
subpoenas issued under two different presidential administrations
and repeatedly and publicly defying the government’s requests.

"Mr. Risen has indicated under oath, without hesitation or
equivocation, that he will not answer questions that go to the
heart of the case. As such, he is unavailable for purposes of the
trial and neither party should be permitted to call him as a
witness," prosecutors wrote in a motion filed Monday in US
District Court for the District of Colombia.

"Mr. Risen’s under-oath testimony has now laid to rest any
doubt concerning whether he will ever disclose his source or
sources for Chapter 9 of State of War (or, for that matter,
anything else he’s written). He will not. As a result, the
government does not intend to call him as a witness at trial.
Doing so would simply frustrate the truth-seeking function of the
trial," the prosecution wrote.

At one point, Risen risked the possibility of serving jail time
for refusing to testify in the case against Sterling, who is
accused of violating the espionage act by leaking CIA
intelligence. Attorney General Eric Holder said last September
that the DOJ would not seek imprisonment, though, easing the
government’s pressure on the journalist for the first time since
they first subpoenaed him seven years earlier.

“We said from the very beginning that under no circumstances
would Jim identify confidential sources to the government or
anyone else,” Joel Kurtzberg, an attorney for Risen,
told the New York Times on Monday. “The
significance of this goes beyond Jim Risen. It affects
journalists everywhere. Journalists need to be able to uphold
that confidentiality in order to do their jobs.”

Josh Gerstein, a reporter for Politico, wrote that “[t]he herky-jerky nature of
the prosecution's approach could reflect the lingering
consequences of a disagreement between trial prosecutors and
senior Justice Department officials, such as Holder. Trial
prosecutors usually want all available evidence to prove their
case. It is unclear what the trial team's reaction was to
Holder's decision to rule out questioning Risen directly about
his confidential sources and to take off the table the threat
that Risen would be thrown in jail for contempt for refusing to
comply with the prosecution subpoena.”

Sterling was the fifth government employee to be charged by the
Obama administration under the Espionage Act of 1917 for
allegedly leaking government information.